


Interlude

by oh_simone



Category: Inception
Genre: Character Study, Domestic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 02:00:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_simone/pseuds/oh_simone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cobb eventually returns to Extracting. But it takes him awhile to get there. This is that awhile, punctuated with Arthur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> Pg-13 (one little f-bomb) Thanks to [](http://myndii.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://myndii.livejournal.com/) **myndii**   for reading it over and being supportive of my crazy. This was the first Inception thingy I ever wrote. Finally putting it up on ao3, woohoo!

Cobb hasn’t seen the rest of his team in nearly three months. In fact, he’s consciously avoided the thought of them, never replies to Ariadne’s emails and lets Arthur’s calls go to voicemail. Miles, on sabbatical and therefore annoyingly present, often gives him pointed looks, and occasionally mentions his students’ work, but Cobb plays dumb, smiles and turns to blow raspberries on James’ soft belly, or hefts Philippa into the kitchen to make smoothies. The truth is, he knows he should get in touch with them, at least call Arthur back. But sometimes he wakes up still wondering if he’s lost in the subconscious, and dreaming this impossible happiness. He doesn’t want to upset the balance—he wonders irrationally if bringing in someone from his past may shatter his present in consequence. And, guiltily, he thinks that if he still dreaming, this time he may not want to wake up.

But Arthur takes it out of his hands by showing up at the door one day, impeccably tailored with an understatedly expensive black travel bag in one hand, gaudily wrapped presents in the other.

“Good evening, Dom,” Arthur intones in that brusque, efficient way, and he doesn’t smile, but his eyes are slightly narrowed in the way that Cobb knows is him hiding his laughter. Arthur gestures, joggles the presents clumsily and quirks a wry eyebrow. “I see you’ve changed your wardrobe since last spring.”

Dumbly, Cobb glances down, and reluctantly chuckles. He’s wearing these truly hideous board shorts that Philippa picked out at Target, black with neon-bright gangster graffiti all over. James chose the shirt, a souvenir from a family trip to Yellowstone. It features cartoon moose in ski gear.

“Didn’t know I’d have polite company tonight,” he replies, taking his bag, and against his reservations, claps Arthur’s shoulder. “Good to see you. Come on in.”

He drops the bag off in the living room, and returns to the kitchen, where Philippa and James, hair still wet from their showers, are trying to make blueberry pancakes for dinner. James’ hair keeps falling into the batter and making Philippa roll her eyes in exaggerated disgust.

“How’s it coming along?” he asks, dropping a kiss on his daughter’s head and peering over at the lumpy, unappetizing mess of pancake batter. He squints. Decides not to comment on the eggshells fragmented in the goo. “Guys, look who’s here.”

The instruction is nearly lost in the cries of “Uncle Arthur!”, and a miniature stampede ensues across the kitchen floor.

“Hey kiddoes,” Arthur says, calmly and easily sinking into a crouch, meeting them straight on. “Sorry I missed your birthday, Jamie. Here you go.”

“Thank you,” James lisps and goggles at the enormous box, giving it a vigorous shaking. Arthur smiles and hands Philippa her own box.

“And one for the duchess, too.”

Philippa beams and thanks him, gazing at him with adoring eyes. Cobb has an uncomfortable flash of the future, his daughter in miniskirts and lipstick, still staring at Arthur with the same expression. He briefly considers banning his associate from the house for the next twenty years.

“Why don’t you kids go to the living room and open those up?” Cobb suggests instead, and glares at Arthur when he smirks like he knows exactly what he’s thinking. Cobb waits until James and Philippa are gone before going to the bowl and dumping out the inedible mixture into the sink.

“They seem to be doing well,” Arthur says, hands tucked into his pockets. He continues to stand in the doorway, not touching the walls.

“They are,” Cobb replies, starting afresh the pancake mix. He looks at Arthur and tips his chin towards the fridge. “Milk, please.”

Silently, not missing a beat, Arthur hands him the gallon jug. Cobb measures out a cup and a fourth of milk, pours it in and hands the gallon back to him without looking. He cracks in the egg and butter, mixes the batter until it’s smooth, then dumps the blueberries in.

Only when he’s poured out four, even circles on the griddle does he turn back to Arthur, who’s laid his jacket carefully on a dining room chair and rolled his sleeves up. Practical, logical, mind-reading Arthur is dicing the potatoes and carrots in tiny, perfect cubes. There’s no use telling him to leave it alone.  
“Pan’s in the third cabinet,” Cobb says instead. “Chicken’s in the fridge.”

 

The kids have pancakes they “made themselves”; Cobb and Arthur have grilled chicken with vegetables. When Philippa shows off her new 3-D puzzle of the Sydney Opera House, Cobb only gives Arthur a dirty look.

 

Later, after Cobb has packed the kids off to bed, a kiss on the forehead for each, accompanied with a Dr. Suess story for James, he comes into the kitchen and finds Arthur methodically washing the dishes, though the dishwasher is empty and ready for loading. Somehow, Cobb finds himself unsurprised. He leans his hip against the counter and crosses his arms, waits until Arthur throws him a brief glance of acknowledgement.

“I’m not taking it,” he says quietly, and watches as Arthur continues scrubbing at a grease stain, completely unperturbed.

“Wasn’t going to ask you to,” Arthur replies, skidding a thumb over the spot and satisfied, sets it down to be rinsed. He meets Cobb’s eyes with a cool, wry look of amusement. “Just passing through town. I’m gone tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Cobb utters, then clams up when he realizes he sounds disappointed. Arthur just smiles and turns the tap for hot water.

 

The next morning, Cobb wakes up to James hurling himself over his belly. By the time he gets his boy dressed and Philippa ready for school, Arthur is long gone, the guest room bed made with fastidious precision that Cobb would never be able to replicate.

 

Maybe it’s because seeing Arthur finally awakens his curiosity or tips his guilt over, but he finally replies to one of Ariadne’s emails that afternoon, sitting in front of his new desktop and painstakingly tapping out exact words that don’t come close to what he wants to tell her.

It doesn’t matter though; next time his parents-in-law come for dinner, Miles smiles at him like he’s a puppy that finally caught on to potty training.

So now Ariadne keeps in touch, sporadically but lengthily. She writes like she talks; straight and blunt, with droll witticisms that make him smile unexpectedly. She tells him about her schoolwork, guest lectures she attends, about construction along the Seine, conservation done on St. Denis, about her formal internship at an American firm based in Paris. Sometimes, she leaves hints of the world Cobbs pulled her into; it’s not often, but those short, vague sentences are still somehow naïve and breathless with wonder at her own capabilities. It raises complicated feelings in him; he hasn’t dreamed in months, and he’d be lying if he didn’t feel envious.

Eames, he hears no word from; they’ve always worked more comfortably with periods of long silence between them, but once when he comes home from meeting with a client (legitimate, ordinary business man who wants to build a private lodge), there’s a package waiting for him with no return address. He shakes out onto his office table an ordinary poker chip from Bellagio worth five dollars, a Polaroid of a MK-19 grenade launcher, and a sly, perfect rendering of Escher’s Tetrahedral Planetoide, 1954 . Included is a short note with strict instructions to pass on the Polaroid to Arthur.

He snorts; Eames’ idea of a joke.

Still, the package tells him something, and when Arthur again rings his doorbell in exactly one month, Cobb is completely unsurprised.

“Pizza’s in the kitchen,” he says by way of greeting. “Beer’s in the fridge.”

Arthur smiles faintly and goes to drop his stuff in the guestroom.

When he comes out, Cobb is back at the table, making notes on the ski lodge project and chewing cold pepperoni pizza.

“Philippa and James are at Miles,” he says without looking up, paging through the logistics.

“I guessed,” his friend says, sitting down besides him at the table and pulling a sheaf of blueprints up to eyelevel. “This your current project?”

“A two-story for Isaac Mehta out in Vail.”

Arthur studies the designs and the scribbles on along the margins and then bites into his pizza. “2007,” he smiles briefly. “Howard Rourke, second level. Decision simulator.”

Cobb flips a sheet at him. “If you’re going to comment on my work, you might as well be helpful.”

His friend grins sharply at him. “Does this mean you’ll consult on mine?”

Nothing can suppress the thrill of excitement at his words. But Cobb shakes his head and returns his smile. “Not this time,” he warns him. “Don’t tell me anything.”

Arthur stays four days, helping Philippa finish the last section of the opera house puzzle and teaching James how to play checkers. When Cobb hands him the Polaroid of the MK-19, Arthur scowls, and tucks the photo away into his briefcase. In return, he gives Philippa a new puzzle of the British Houses of Parliament.

 

Sleep now is a dreamless event for Cobb. He’s spent so much time orchestrating dreamscapes that what’s left over for his own natural sleep is never strong enough to hold much impression anymore. Still, he doesn’t need to dream to remember Mal, with her dark, curling hair and small, expressive hands. Philippa’s hair is darkening now that winter is setting in, and sometimes, James laughs like his mother, the sound and cadence jolting a fresh wave of dull grief in him.

But just because he doesn’t dream, doesn’t mean his sleep is easy. Cobb can go for weeks sleeping fine, before one reason or another has him jolting out of bed not fully awake. Sometimes, he’s just simply unable to sleep for days at a time. When these periods happen, it’s no use lying in bed; Cobb usually finds himself making coffee at three in the morning and working in his office or reading the least comprehensible textbooks on architectural theory that he can find. Sometimes, he thinks about Yusuf’s basement full of drugged dreaming sleepers, like some gritty, cynical, underground island of lotus-eaters. It’s a grim image, but not so unwelcome when ordinary sleep refuses to take hold.

One morning, he’s fixing omelets for breakfast and listening with half an ear to Philippa tell him about her upcoming dance recital when James comes tottering in, yawning and with his shirt on backwards. While he’s laughing and rearranging his son’s clothes, Philippa kicks her ankles back and forth at the kitchen table and eats her cereal.

“Dad,” she says in that oddly grown-up tone she uses sometimes, “last night, I had a dream that Kathy and me were being chased by monsters who used to be Sarah and Nancy and Joan from dance class, except they had claws and green teeth. And then Uncle Arthur came in and saved us with Mr. Moses’ walking stick, and took us for milk shakes at the pier. What do you think it means?”

Cobb opens his mouth to reply, maybe like ‘ _what_ about Uncle Arthur?’ but the words won’t come out. He realizes that somewhere along the way, he has stopped wondering about the significance of ordinary dreams when he learned how to build them.

 

By now, the sitting room has given over completely to displaying miniatures of the world’s most famous structures. Cobb takes a picture of the chaotic mess and sends it to Ariadne when she asks to see it. A week later, she sends back a sketch of a city cobbled together by the same monuments and seamlessly strung together in an odd but elegant crosswork of tree-lined boulevards and large, European plazas. There’s a giant question mark under it. He laughs, because of course she would take his photo as a challenge. Knowing Ariadne as he does, she probably already has the world designed and built in her dreaming, not for any other reason but diversion, and is now taking her coffee under the mingled shade of the Sears Tower and the Pantheon.

 

Cobb flies out to consult on the Mehta lodge, and spends the night in Denver. He’s tired and distempered; there are parts of the lodge that have been changed to fit one whim or the other of the owner, and while Cobb realizes that he’s designing for a client now, it’s been long enough since he’s had to face critiques of his own work, much less have his design tweaked without being informed of it.

When he calls home, it isn’t Miles who answers, but Arthur.

“Don’t tell me he left you alone with them,” Cobb sighs, kneading his forehead.

“He says I’m reliable,” Arthur ripostes smugly. He goes on to methodically list the dinner he prepared for them, how late he let Philippa stay up, and which pajamas James chose to wear to bed that night. It’s a comfortable and familiar intonation in his ear, and Cobb relaxes unconsciously as he listens to Arthur debrief the status of his children and home like it was a case.

“I’ll be back by noon,” Cobb tells him when he finally winds down. He’s practically asleep on the covers of the bed, shoes kicked off and tie flung haphazardly somewhere to the side.

“I’ll be on my way to Madrid,” Arthur replies, then adds practically, “But I’ll see Philippa and James off at the bus stop before I go.”

 

Philippa is developing a system with the puzzles: she shakes out the pieces into the box lid, and painstakingly separates them by shape and color, storing each different pile in blue Glad boxes carefully labeled with a pink Sharpie. She works on the puzzles whenever she has time, and Cobb sits with her in the evenings after James is in bed, piecing together bit by bit buildings he could have flung up in moments in his dreams. Sometimes, Cobb wonders if he should ever tell his children how real their favorite bedtime stories are. Mostly though, Cobb watches Philippa’s fascination with cities and structures growing, and knows with a sort of doomed certainty that she’s bound to shape dreams someday. With a bloodline like hers, it’s practically inevitable.

 

One evening, he receives a phone call while proofing his proposal for a concert hall. It’s Saito, and immediately, he’s on his guard. He might think the Japanese businessman is an okay guy, might thank him for securing his way home, but it doesn’t mean news of him, especially from him is any more welcoming than a dead albatross to a ship.

“Good evening, Mr. Cobb,” Saito greets in that business-perfect silk-smooth tone. “It has been entirely too long since we last spoke.”

“Mr. Saito,” Cobb returns, a tad flatly, and drops his pen on the table surface. “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing illegal this time, Mr. Cobb, so don’t sound so serious.” Saito sounds like he’s laughing. “I heard you’re designing homes now, real ones.”

“Yes, that’s right. Are you looking to build something?” he asks cautiously.

Saito hms a little. “I do have some land north of Santa Barbara that I want to build on, but not for a little while longer. No, there is another minor matter to discuss first. Mr. Cobb, understand that I respect you and your skills very much. And in fact, to my surprise, quite like you; you are a decent enough man. I also understand that you have left the business rather, but your team still continues on to a large degree, is that so?”

“Let’s get to the point,” Cobb suggests tersely.

“Very well. Your Arthur fellow has been approached with a job recently, involving a woman named Kazegawa Suzu. It is best if you advise him to reject it.” Saito’s voice is crisp and business-like over the telephone, holding no hint of threat, but Cobb doesn’t fool himself in thinking it’s not there.

“He’ll want a good reason to drop it,” Cobb replies. “And it better be reasons he can see and hold in his hands.”

Saito’s quiet for a moment, before chuckling. “He does seem the sort of man.”

 

The sky is a disgusting roiling gray when Arthur calls him back, sounding pissed.

“How do you know about the Kazegawa case?”

“Saito,” Cobb says, glancing out the window at the storm clouds gathering in the sky like bits of angry pulled wool. “Arthur, if he’s warning you off a case, I’d do as he says.”

“That’s not his job,” Arthur shoots back. “It’s not yours either.”

“I know,” Cobb hastily assures him. Arthur only gets this prickly when his competence is called into question. “And Saito figured you’d be offended. He said to take a look at the Koremitsu Coda before you make your decision.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” Arthur says, clipped and unhappy, by now probably more galled by having looked something over.

“Which is why he bothered to send word,” Cobb points out. Arthur’s briefly silent, and then there’s the click and hum of the line disconnecting. He slides his phone closed and calculates idly if he’d be able to pick up the kids before it starts to storm.

 

A day later, Arthur’s shows up at the door, in a heavy black trench and a black umbrella. He looks very much like an angry and pathetic wet cat.

“I dropped it,” he bites out as he shakes off his umbrella and coat. “Saito was right; it’s not worth the trouble.” He looks at Cobb, half mournfully, half sullenly. “I hate it when he knows more than I do.”

“I’ll get you a towel,” Cobb says instead, hiding a grin, and leaves Arthur to the mercy of two bored kids on a school night.

Soon enough, he hustles the kids to bed early with bribes of waffles for breakfast, and returns to the living room where his guest has changed into dry clothing and is drying off his hair. Without it severely slicked back, Cobb is amused to find Arthur look about twenty years younger. No wonder he chooses that particular style- if he kept his hair long, no one would take him seriously. He pours Arthur a neat shot of bourbon from the liquor cabinet and settles in an armchair across from him. Arthur tips the glass in mute recognition and takes a long drink.

“Long day?” Cobb asks with a crooked grin. Arthur glares at him.

“Long fucking week,” he corrects grudgingly, using a rare profanity. “One I could have spent at home.”

In the back of Arthur’s discreet little condo in Los Angeles, there’s a small plot of land that the residents have turned into a community garden. Surprisingly, Cobb knows that for all of Arthur’s cat-like fastidiousness, he has no qualms about sinking to his knees in soft brown soil and tending to his corner of kitchen herbs. The one time Cobb’s gone to fetch him from his home, he found Arthur hanging bunches of lavender and rosemary to dry in his kitchen window, the golden Californian sun streaming through the window in diagonal shafts of light. It’s that image now that comes to mind as he watches him contemplate his drink morosely, Arthur in his garden of useful and fragrant herbs.

“You could be there now,” Cobb points out, breaking the silence. “It’s miserable weather here.” Arthur gives him a flat look that’s softened by the dark curling tendrils of hair around his face.

“I could be,” Arthur agrees. “But here I am.” He cocks his head and fixes Cobb with a narrow stare. “Just checking in.”

Cobb swallows his own drink in a bid for time, and then clenches his jaw. “No,” he says simply. “I’m done.”

Arthur holds his eyes a moment too long, and then shrugs, tiredly folding into his seat on the couch. “I’ve got a client meeting tomorrow,” he tells him out loud. “Your place is closer to the rendezvous than Los Angeles. That’s all.” He rolls his head up to meet Cobb’s eyes. “Don’t wake me before noon.” It’s a pointed way of telling Cobb how long he’ll stay; Arthur’s the sort of man who never needs an alarm clock.

 

For the first time in months, Cobb dreams, a true, flighty, disjointed dream. When he opens his eyes in the morning, he struggles to remember the elusive flashes of it, and succeeds only in dredging up an impression of warmth, one he used to feel with every one of Mal’s slow-spreading smiles. The ache it awakes in him is startlingly intense. He wants to build dreams again.

He’s still feeling disoriented as he goes through the motions of waffle making, James wanting strawberries on his, Philippa insisting on marshmallows and M&M minis. Their cheerful patter of sound surrounds him like a bubble, and as he wipes sticky red syrup off of James’ smile, there’s a rush of pure gratitude that he’s standing here with a wet towel in his hands. Dreaming doesn’t seem as urgent when he’s faced with getting his son and daughter off to school in time.

 

But without the children there to ground him, he feels the excuses slip away, leaving behind an increasingly bare desire for the dreams. Plug in, or don’t: it shouldn’t be as big a deal as he’s making it out to be, Cobb _knows_ that. But somehow, it just is.

 

Cobb tries to work on the concert hall project until lunch time, and finally quits when he catches himself thinking about groceries for the fourth time. He saves the files and goes into the kitchen where Arthur is immaculate and put together, no sign of last night’s bedraggled mess. His hair is a smooth, perfect sweep away from his face, the crease in his three-piece suit crisp and fresh even though Cobb’s pretty sure he hasn’t seen the clothes iron in years. The PASIV sits below the kitchen counter, and Cobb stares at it longer than he intends to. When he pulls his eyes away, Arthur is looking back at him stoically but patiently.

“You need a ride?” Cobb asks. Arthur tips his head, then sets down a new puzzle of the Duomo in Florence.

“I called a cab,” he says, as if reminding Cobb that he doesn’t believe in last minute planning.

 

There’s no point in going back to work, so Cobb takes a walk through the neighboring hills, covered in chaparral, snug in a thick jacket and hiking boots. Yesterday’s storm has given way to crystalline winter sun shine that warms the top of his head barely enough to counteract the chill air. The pull of clean, long breaths sharpens his mind and senses and he lets himself look over the crest of the green land before him. Mal is not buried here, but her graveyard is surrounded by the same sort of stillness and calm. He’d have to fly across an ocean to sit at her grave site, but here, he can close his eyes and pretend for awhile they’re together.

 

Ariadne calls him a week later.

“You never told me you worked with the CIA before,” she accuses as soon as Philippa hands him the phone.

“Hello Ariadne,” Cobb greets amiably.

“Oh,” she sounds a little distracted. “Hello.” And then all seriousness again: “I thought you just stole ideas.”

Sighing, he leaves Philippa piecing together Kyoto’s Golden Pavilion on her own and goes into his study. “Ethics and legalities aren’t the same thing,” he says. “Extracting ideas was my job, whether it was from corporate men or suspected terrorists. In fact, I’m surprised you’re only on your first government funded job now.”

“It’s mostly Arthur,” Ariadne tells him, irritation rapidly bleeding away. “He’s been screening everything and only started letting me see proposals last week. But we’re working with an agent called Bristol. She says she worked with you and Arthur before.”

Cobb rubs his temple and grimaces. “I was her supervisor, actually,” he tells her dryly, then frowns. “Did she say anything else about me?”

There’s a pause as Ariadne chews it over in her head, and something in her mouth too. Cobb can hear her eating a sandwich. “Nothing bad, if that’s what you’re asking,” she finally tells him. “She did say she’d rather you were there, but Arthur told her to leave you alone, since you’re out.”

“Yeah,” Cobb agrees uselessly. “That’s right.” Even he can hear the twinge of wistfulness in his words; Ariadne of course picks up on it immediately.

“You should come back,” she tells him bluntly. “Eames is trying to switch out Edith Piaf with The Clash; it’s driving Arthur nuts every time he hears ‘London Calling’ instead of ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’. He gets all cranky and twitchy afterwards.”

“Not yet,” Cobb replies, chuckling despite himself and then stops in surprise, because he should have said no, no, I’m out. On the other end, she seems to have picked up his unease, and crumples her napkins audibly.

“You love this stuff more than anyone else I’ve met in this business, which given, isn’t that many people. But you’re the best. You said so yourself.” There’s a pause and Cobb hears murmured French and street noises in the background. Ariadne picks up again, sounding sure of herself. “You just have to see she’s not down there still, that’s all. You’ll be back.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Cobb tries to tell her, but Ariadne dismisses his words easily.

“Take your time,” she tells him, rustling with all the energy of a fifth year architect student. “We’re waiting for you.”

Cobb envies her confidence in him, but she’s pinned down that twisting unease in him that’s holding him back when even he hadn’t wanted to put voice to it. He doesn’t know whether to feel irritated or amused, and finally settles for setting the phone back on its cradle and returning to the glacial process of building a golden pagoda in reality.

 

Now that Ariadne’s put the words in his mind, he can’t stop wondering. And he’s thinking, the reason he’s holding back, it can’t be as simple as that, surely? But maybe it is, and maybe it’s just as easy as sliding the IV in and closing his eyes. Weeks pass still, and he can’t bring himself to take the chance.

 

James catches the seasonal flu and spends two days out of school being absolutely miserable. Cobb doesn’t bother with work; the pace would have been incremental and tedious anyhow, and spends the afternoon rocking his sick child in his arms. James is crying softly and running a low fever, but he’s lulled into a state of calm as Cobb spins stories about cities that wrap themselves into loops, that fold, that fly. By the time James falls asleep, Cobb doesn’t know for who he’s telling these stories anymore.

Philippa finishes the Duomo that night, and carefully sets it among her strange, international city in miniature. She looks up at her dad and grins, both of them knowing that Arthur’s about due to bring her a new one soon.

 

“You might want to have her tested,” Arthur notes the next time he appears, en route to Port-au-Prince. He’s standing with Cobb at the entrance of the sitting room which looks more like a Disneyland exhibit than part of the house. “I never thought she’d finish the first one, let alone all of them.”

“What can I say? I contributed sixty percent of the hard labor,” Cobb says casually, and grins as Arthur rolls his eyes. “Please stop buying her more. As you see, I don’t have a sitting room anymore.” His voice is light, but he looks straight at Arthur, who blinks at him in silence, before finally cracking a small smile.

“What the hell. I was running out of good ones to buy anyways,” he says, and lays the newest and last puzzle of the Louvre down on the floor.

 

They set up in study with the door closed but not locked, after he puts Philippa and James to bed. Cobb fingers the IV of the machine, gives it a wipe with alcohol-soaked gauze, and lines it up below the tourniquet on his arm. He can’t get the needle in at first, his hands shaking as badly as the first time he did this. Arthur doesn’t say a word, just kneels before him and plucks it from his fingers. He holds his arm steady and firm, slides the needle right in.

“You ready?” Arthur asks him quietly, dark eyes level and serious on his, his hand dry and warm on his elbow. Cobb’s grateful that’s all he asks. He nods, and then tilts his head back against the chair and breathes.

“Do it,” he instructs, tries not to predict what he’ll find. Arthur depresses the button.

 

The elevator jolts to a stop on a beach he’s seen a thousand times before in his mind, but only once in reality. The smell of ocean pervades the air, the roar of surf and cry of gulls far off and wavering. A brisk sea breeze blows across his face, and his feet sink into the warm sand, but there are no children, and no woman in sight.

 

Arthur finds him in his dreamscape living room, sitting on the couch in the perpetual afternoon sun. He stands, patient and straight as Cobb gathers himself up, feeling both heavier and lighter than before.

“She’s gone,” Cobb says, both relief and resignation in his voice. “I knew she would be, but I almost wish she wasn’t.”

If Ariadne had been with him, she would have offered some brief but pure sincerity. Say, ‘see? It’s not that bad is it?’ And maybe that would have made him feel better, or conversely, realize the inadequacy of human language.

But it’s only Arthur there, silent, reliable, and almost unreadable, too polite perhaps, to tell Cobb ‘good riddance’. And how can Cobb blame him? He will never voice it to his face, but Cobb knows Arthur resents the fact that he was never told the extent of subconscious Mal’s interference with the Fischer job. There is so much more Cobb owes Arthur for than is easily repaid, least of all his unquestionable loyalty.

Slowly, reluctant with perhaps nostalgia and the shadow of regret, Cobb walks away from the room and goes to join his most steadfast friend in the elevator. With Arthur as always on point, Cobb raises his hand and brings it down slowly. Together, they watch as the architecture of his memories crumble apart at the seams.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

\--  



End file.
